I tell my students that colonist is not equivalent to deer, the same in the singular or plural. They laugh, and then they remember to add the s. Thanks for the they-don’t-hear-the-final-s explanation, for I, too, have always been puzzled by that.

Can we do the ellipse next time? The misuse of the ellipse drives me insane. Or how about the crazy, weird $hit students give you for footnotes, when all they would have to do is copy the style that is in the book they are actually writing about.

I think certain kinds of gatekeeping are just fine, particularly when we have to imagine that at least some of our students will be expected to use proper punctuation in the world. The interwebz hasn’t changed everyzings.

But then again, I also think it’s okay for some people to say, “I don’t want to be inside your gated community,” and I can respect that choice.

TSS, who confesses to being both biased and prejudiced against students who cannot form adjectives properly

But, to the contrary, I’d argue that the proper use of the apostrophe is something that editors and peer-reviewers of all kinds of professional writing, journalism in magazine & newspapers, etc. know well and probably use in making decisions about hiring staff. So I’d argue that rather than being a gatekeeper by enforcing correct use of the apostrophe, I’m offering my students some of the keys that will unlock gates for them.

If nothing else, I think that the correct use of the apostrophe can be very useful in graduate admissions. At least, I rarely if ever have run into a really great grad student who was either still confused about or hadn’t bothered to figure out the proper use of the apostrophe. Perhaps it’s a talisman for finding students who will care about getting other details right? (But I guess that would make me a gatekeeper after all.)

I think Rustonite was, rather, suggesting that a) this change may have already passed us by; and b) you may find it useful but many folks clearly do not find it useful (or else find it useful in ways which you–and others–do not approve of).

If scholars are mere gatekeepers, we need to acknowledge that role; if “usefulness” is the key criterion, then a huge number of English writers find apostrophes “useful” for plurals.

And lest I be seen as too liberal by some readers: I personally have a visceral reaction to an apostrophe that’s used in what I believe to be a “wrong” way: but I don’t know if I have ever been truly uncertain about what the writer meant. Quite the opposite: generally, my conviction that what I’m reading is ‘wrong’ is supported by my confidence that I have, in fact, correctly understood the intended meaning as well as understood what the ‘correct’ way to present that meaning is. Likewise I can’t remember ever being confused when a speaker said [Its] about whether or not it was a possessive pronoun or a contraction. “Wrong” apostrophe use is “wrong in form” but it is typically not unclear in terms of meaning. I am more likely to pretend confusion over such a matter than to be truly confused, at least in the examples I typically run into in student papers and on the street.

It’s the fact that “correct” apostrophe use rarely actually clarifies intended meaning that leads so many writers to decide it is not “useful” to their writing (or not useful enough to them to encourage them to learn the standard rules).

Srsly?

I always thought that “-ly” was just the anglicized pronunciation of the Germanic “lich” suffix, so is it really a “mistake?”

I think scholars should stand for what’s useful rather than unexamined tradition. And I believe the apostrophe is still useful!